Budget rig: a ₹75,000 add-on setup for a laptop producer

The brief: you make electronic music on a laptop you already own, and you have ₹75,000 for everything else: an audio interface, monitors, a MIDI keyboard and headphones. All prices below are what Bajaao, an Indian music retailer, showed on 26 Oct 2026. USD figures are conversions at 95.16 rupees to the dollar, the ExchangeRate-API rate for that day, not US street prices. Prices move often; check before you buy.

This is a desk review from listed prices and specs. We have not tested this rig.

The rig

That leaves about ₹2,445 for a pair of balanced cables to the monitors.

Why each piece

Interface: Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 4th Gen. Bajaao listed it at ₹24,385, down from ₹27,930. Focusrite's own page lists it at $239.99 and gives the parts that matter here: two mic preamps, two instrument inputs, two balanced line outputs for monitors, a headphone output, loopback, and USB-C bus power, so it runs off the laptop with no extra adapter.

Monitors: JBL 305P MkII. Bajaao listed the 305P MkII at ₹13,238 for a single speaker, so ₹26,476 for the two you need. Monitors are the biggest line in this budget, and they are where people overspend: Yamaha's own India store lists the HS5 pair at an MRP of ₹43,700 (out of stock when we looked), and Bajaao's HS7 pair was ₹45,784. Either would eat well over half the budget on its own.

MIDI keyboard: Novation Launchkey Mini 37 MK4. Bajaao listed it at ₹18,244. Thirty-seven keys is enough for basslines and chords on a desk next to a laptop. If you play with two hands, the Launchkey 49 MK4 was ₹30,480, which breaks the budget unless you cut elsewhere.

Headphones: AKG K92. Bajaao listed these closed-back headphones at ₹3,450. The obvious pick, Audio-Technica's ATH-M50x, was marked sold out at ₹10,499 on the same day.

If you need to cut

The Scarlett Solo was ₹13,624 on the same page as the 2i2. If you never record two sources at once, it saves you ₹10,761, enough to move from the Mini 37 to a bigger keyboard or to better headphones.

What we think

Spend on the monitors last, not first. A laptop producer in a small, untreated bedroom will hear the room more than the speaker, so the jump from 5-inch JBLs to a Yamaha HS5 pair costs about ₹17,000 more for a difference the room may hide. That money does more as a better controller you will touch every day, or kept back for plug-ins. The one place not to save is the interface outputs: you want balanced line outputs to the monitors, which both Scarletts here have. And since monitor prices in India swing a lot between list and sale, set a price alert rather than buying the day you decide.